In the
old west towns of
Deadwood,
Dodge City,
Tombstone,
and Virginia City, gamblers played with their back to the wall and
their guns at their sides, as dealers dealt games with names such as
Chuck-A-Luck, Three Card Monte, High Dice, and
Faro, by
far the favorite in the
wild
west
saloons.

The exact origin of
poker is
unknown but many have speculated that it originated from a 16th
century Persian card game called As Nas. Played with a 25 card
deck containing five suits, the rules were similar to today’s Five
Card Stud. Others are of the opinion that it was invented by the
Chinese in 900 A.D. In all likelihood, the game derived from
elements of various gambling diversions that have been around from the
beginning of time.

Poker in the
United States was first widely played in New Orleans by French
settlers playing a card game that involved bluffing and betting called
Poque in the early 1800's. This old
poker game
was similar to the "draw
poker” game
we play today. New Orleans evolved as America’s first gambling city as
riverboat men, plantation owners and farmers avidly pursued the
betting sport.

The first American gambling casino was opened in New
Orleans around 1822 by a man named John Davis. The club, open
twenty-four hours a day, provided gourmet food, liquor, roulette
wheels, Faro
tables, poker,
and other games. Davis also made certain that
painted
ladies were never far away. Dozens of imitators soon followed
making the gaming dens the primary attraction of New Orleans. The
city's status as an international port and its thriving gambling
industry created a new profession, called the card "sharper."

Professional gamblers and cheats gathered in a waterfront area known
as "the swamp," an area even the police were afraid to frequent, and
any gambler lucky enough to win stood a good chance of losing his
earnings to thieves outside of the gambling rooms and saloons.

Gambling was outlawed in the rest of the huge
Louisiana territory in 1811, but New Orleans continued to enjoy the
prosperity brought by gambling for more than 100 years. Though the
law was passed for the entire Louisiana Purchase, it was obviously not
enforced and casinos and gambling began to spread.

As commerce developed on
the waterways, gambling traveled up the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, then
westward via covered wagons, and later on the railroad. The first
written reference in the United States came from Jonathan H. Greer in 1834
when he referred to the amusement as the "cheating game.”

Some of the first
gambling dens outside of New Orleans were started on river towns that were
popular to both travelers and professional gamblers. It was here
that many "sharpers” preyed on these transient people, with their pockets
filled with their life savings, on the way to the new frontier. The
dishonest gamblers also often ran confidence games and other con artist
businesses, in order to gaff the unwary pioneers. A host of companies specialized
in manufacturing and selling card cheating devices. One riverboat gambler
named George Devol was so proud of his ability to slip a stacked deck into
a game that he once used four of them in one poker
hand, dealing four aces to each of his four opponents.

It was professional gamblers who were largely
responsible for the
poker boom. Considering themselves as entrepreneurs, they took
advantage of America’s growing obsession with gambling. Though
having a high opinion of themselves, the public viewed them with disdain,
considering them as contributing nothing to society. This viewpoint
was often warranted in many cases, as a large number of professional
gamblers often cheated in order to win. To be successful,
professional gamblers had to have irresistible personalities in order to
attract men to play with them. Often dressing in dandy clothes,
their success depended partly on chance and partly on skill, sometimes on
slight of hand, and in the
Old West,
their shooting abilities. By the 1830s, citizens began to blame
professional gamblers for any and every crime in the area and gambling
itself began to be attacked.

It
was during these riverboat gambling heydays that an interesting story
occurred in 1832. On a Mississippi steamboat four men were playing
poker, three of
which were professional gamblers, and the fourth, a hapless traveler from
Natchez. Soon, the young naïve man had lost all his money to the
rigged game. Devastated, the Natchez man planned to throw himself
into the river; however, an observer prevented his suicide attempt, and
then joined the card game with the "sharps.” In the middle of a high
stakes hand, the stranger caught one of the professionals cheating and
pulled a knife on the gambler, yelling, "Show your hand! If it
contains more than five cards I shall kill you!” When he
twisted the cheater’s wrist, six cards fell to the table. Immediately, the stranger took the $70,000 pot, returning $50,000 to the
Natchez man and keeping $20,000 for his trouble. Shocked, the
Natchez man stuttered, "Who the devil are you, anyway?” to which the
stranger responded, "I am James Bowie.”

Anxious citizens of these river port towns grew more and
more wary of the confidence men that were multiplying so quickly.
In Vicksburg, Mississippi, the citizens rage
had become so increased by 1835, five cardsharps were lynched by a
vigilante group. It was soon after this that many of the gamblers
moved onto the riverboats, benefiting from the transient riverboat
lifestyle.

At the conclusion of the
Civil War,
America pushed her boundaries West, where the frontier was born
of speculators, travelers, and miners. These hardy pioneers had high
risk taking characteristics, making any gambling situation a popular
pastime for these rough and tumble men of the frontier. In virtually
every mining camp and prairie town a
poker table could
soon be found in each saloon,
surrounded by prospectors, lawmen,
cowboys,
railroad workers,
soldiers,
and
outlaws for a chance to tempt fortune and fate.